


Live in Living Color

by newyorktopaloalto



Category: Night at the Museum (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Post-Night at the Museum 3: Secret of the Tomb, The Tablet of Ahkmenrah, other magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-24 12:35:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18165275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newyorktopaloalto/pseuds/newyorktopaloalto
Summary: In Athens, an ancient tablet had been discovered - the world was not prepared for the consequences of making its secrets public.





	Live in Living Color

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DesertScribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertScribe/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own the Night at the Museum movies, so please don't sue. Title comes from Catch Me If You Can. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, and I hope that you enjoy!

The news spread quickly, as all world-changing news did. 

An ancient tablet buried with an equally ancient couple, which historians had decreed an offering to Hesperus, had been found during a cave-in in central Greece. The tablet, once brought to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, was able to bring to life stories that its finders had never believed possible—every artifact with significant cultural value in a kilometer's radius was brought, seemingly by magic, to life during the night hours. It was a phenomenon that most believed nothing more than an elaborate hoax—on par, if not better than the stunt at the American Museum of Natural History eight years previous—until governmental and scientific agencies from practically every UN country, barring Suriname, Iceland, and Oman, declared only marginally discrete findings in what they shrugged off to be an as-of-yet unexplained phenomenon. 

Around the globe came an uptick in internet views, book sales, library check-outs, and old-fashioned chit-chat about ancient Greek mythology and the contemporary value in such a belief system—foreign as though it might have seemed for many of those with what they believed to be strict religious views. Relics were being burnt, temples were being built, and humanity was—quite simply—terrifyingly unsure of what to do with itself when they collectively realized that neither science nor religion had the answer to what made the universe tick. 

Ahkmenrah, once again on semi-permanent display in the Upper West Side, found the entire matter woefully exhausting. Without proof, he was unsure as to whether or not Hesperus' tablet—or the tablet of whoever was meant to wield the thing—was a complete and total knock-off of his own, but he also found himself prickly about the exact specifications of this second tablet and copyright issues in regard to his own, regardless. 

Thankfully, most of the exhibits seemed to be in general consensus with him. Action, they felt, must be taken to further their knowledge of the other museums' living histories. 

The validity of the matter was discussed quite heavily between he and his parents, until Merenkahre finally threw up his hands in frustration and left the main hall muttering about the 'damn Greeks, and their _fire_ , and their governmental structure'. Shepseheret, after a long-suffering, but wide-eyed look passed between her and Ahkmenrah, gracefully followed. It was unlikely that Merenkahre would be able to pray his way to an answer—no matter Kohnsu's preferential treatment of the pharaoh's lineage. 

A throat cleared behind him a few polite seconds after they could no longer hear discernible footfalls—those gathered had been silent as Merenkahre and Shepseheret tried to reconcile what they thought they believed to be true and what was now staring them in the faces. 

“We have an overarching question, now, son.” 

Ahkmenrah glanced at Teddy—the president looked resolute, and Ahkmenrah, not for the first time, understood how this outdoors-man became a great leader of a thriving nation—and said, “This matter does present a quandary, yes.” 

“I wouldn't call it a quandary, necessarily,” Teddy equivocated, and Ahkmenrah felt himself holding back a sigh by only the smallest of margins. 

“Then what could it possibly be?” 

“It doesn't matter,” Jedidiah interrupted them before Teddy could reply. “What matters is the idea me and Octavius here have been cooking up since we heard about it.” 

Octavius nodded, solemn as Jedidiah passed him the metaphorical torch, and said, “My friends—'the overarching question', to coin a phrase, is this: What, precisely, are we going to do with the Greeks, then?” 

“'Tavius here has been hollering about gladiator games for the past year and a half, and I'm just saying that _that_? Sounds like a helluva lot of fun—best museum wins. There, settled the score, bam! We're on top.” 

“Yes, exactly,” Octavius agreed, snapping at his contingent for their attention as he and Jedidiah's energy worked off one another. “Men, bring me the telephone—we shall make travel arrangements to Greece and fight the inhabitants of this other museum.” 

“You will do no such thing,” Ahkmenrah disagreed, clicking his own fingers to get Dexter to stand guard against the gladiators. The capuchin, thankfully, must have felt similarly about the situation, as he had no problem in heeding Ahkemenrah's unvoiced command. 

“The telephone,” Teddy said before either Jedidiah or Octavius could start an argument, “seems a salient plan.” He raised his eyebrows at Ahkmenrah with an odd expression that could only mean one thing. 

“I don't believe we should bother him. Not for something as trivial as a copyrighted tablet.” 

“Oh, pish, he's in archaeological academia now—this is the very thing his discipline thrives upon, my boy.” 

There was nothing to that statement that Ahkmenrah could conceivably disagree with, and so he nodded his, unenthusiastic and delayed, assent to where Dexter had already let the small soldiers past his physical barricade.

* * *

“—book, part of the Song dynasty and carbon dated to 1032-1052 AD. It has been in the possession of the National Palace Museum in Taipei since 1948. The PRC issued a denial statement only hours after the ROC made their official announcement, and ambassadors from a multitude of countries are currently being held at their embassies in Beijing whilst Xi Jinping makes a final decision. This is Monica Porter, reporting live from Beijing for BBC World News.” 

Larry, who had been watching the television over Ahkmenrah's shoulder, let out a low 'huh', before starting to pace behind him. 

“Okay, but why _now_?” It was rhetorical, but Ahkmenrah had an answer out of his mouth almost instantly, much to his own astonishment—he had been, apparently, been ruminating upon the matter for more time than he had thought. 

“Jealousy.” 

“I'm sorry?” 

Ahkmenrah waved away his question, trying to match his tone to his sanguine motion. “The tablet in Greece was found and it became a... viral sensation.” He paused at still unfamiliar colloquialism and looked at Larry—Larry, completely unhelpful as to modern terminology, shrugged. “It became a sensation and other museums, ones that have been keeping secrets—arguably much as we have been, be it longer or shorter depending on when their artifact arrived at location and its individual limitations as a power source—they must have realized the notoriety that they, too, could gain; magical artifacts that turn history to life is, after all, a highly lucrative industry.” 

“If you know how to market it correctly—they don't seem to be,” Larry said, shaking his head before turning off the television; the news cycle had started to repeat itself, and no updated information had come out of Beijing in the last few minutes. 

“Quite,” Ahkmenrah agreed, before hesitating on his next words. “Exposing our own tablet would grant us better access to the other affected museums.” 

“Yeah, but the scrutiny we'd be under would make international news. You've seen what it's like in Athens even now.” Larry paused. “There's a lot of academics there, a lot of scientists, and a lot of government officials—and with that many people and that many agendas? I just can't see them caring much about the self-determination of artifacts that come to life in increasingly bizarre ways.

“To most of the world? This is the biggest paradigm shift that they will experience in their entire life.” He placed his hand, consoling, on Ahkmenrah's shoulder, who honestly didn't really want to think about what the world as a whole would think about his continued existence—limited as it were. “And that's scary.” 

“Well said, Lawrence—I concur fully.” 

Both Larry and Ahkmenrah jumped a little at Teddy's sudden appearance; for being a wax figure, the man was surprisingly light on his feet, and Ahkmenrah always believed it to be primarily due to Sacajawea's influence rather than a lingering vestige of his former occupation as the actual Theodore Roosevelt. This was, of course, only hypothetical—with such a small pool of candidates to rely upon and Ahkmenrah armed with only the knowledge of their post-tablet existence, he was still unsure if his own personality shift was due to the tablet's magic re-animating him every night or simply the passage of time, like sand through the hourglass, going forth and ever on, relentlessly. 

The magic of belief, Ahkmenrah supposed, wasn't meant to be fully understood; the fact of the matter was that Kohnsu's tablet was not alone in its power, and whatever arcane rules in the universe that governed it—if not just random happenstance, everything in existence mixing until the ghosts of the past simply just came to life once more, as long as motive, remembrance, belief, was there—did not find it appropriate to cease its influence after exhibiting it for the first time. Ahkmenrah was beginning to believe that his family was not a divine exception, but a mere cog of the rule. 

“So we just keep it a secret? Let ourselves sink into obscurity as the masses throw themselves at other museums whilst unknowing that the 'special effects' they once believed to be oh-so-revolutionary were in fact the first to actually expose themselves to a previously disbelieving public?” 

“Until everything settles down—yeah, I think that's the best thing we can do.” 

Ahkmenrah scoffed, despite the logical pull of Larry's side of their argument. 

“This is why you brought me in, Ahk; if you didn't want my honest opinion, I wouldn't be here—I am, technically, banned from the premises for the rest of my natural life, and if McPhee chose to, he could enforce that order.” A pause. “Especially with you telling him to.” 

It was a few moments before Ahkmenrah said, “My father and mother pray every night to Kohnsu, hoping to attain enlightenment. They do not say it, but they don't understand why He took alternate forms to give magic to illegitimate rulers or those in a lower standing than the highest echelons in which favors from the Gods were considered commonplace.” 

“Belief is strong, Ahkmenrah,” Teddy cautioned, and Ahkmenrah bit his lips in order to stifle whatever scathing comment he knew would come out of his mouth without fully filtering through his brain. “It is difficult to separate ingrained theological belief—especially that which seemed to perpetuate itself through literal centuries—from the rationalization that if not multitudes, then what is the universe?” 

“Belief is what makes all this work. It doesn't matter whose,” Larry said. 

Ahkmenrah, who felt a little faint, but not so much as he would have been had this conversation come just a few weeks earlier, said, “Or what, in particular, that belief might be.” 

“That is,” Teddy agreed with a wry smile, “ _my_ belief. But who knows, it's an entirely different playing field up there.” He gestured to where, were they outside, the rest of the universe resided. 

The public, Ahkmenrah knew, would not accept that interpretation of the order of the universe—Ahkmenrah, himself, was hardly accepting of it and he had been a member of the living dead for thousands of years—because it was easier to either fully understand something or chalk it up to a scientific or religious marvel. There would be an explanation, neat and tidy, and it would be entirely wrong—it would also be widely heralded, and Ahkmenrah as not usually so prescient to ephemeral matters, as the unequivocal truth. 

How many times had he seen the world build itself upon a pillar only to have it crumble from its foundation at the first rumblings of an earthquake? And he knew that, were anything to be casualties of humanity's willful delusion, it would be the exhibits themselves—troves of historical significance happily lost to settle the fears of a public that only wanted to understand the world around them when it was convenient or easy. 

“You will stay, then,” Ahkmenrah decided, knowing it would only take Larry a few moments to catch on to the non-sequitur. “Dr. McPhee does not have the same presence as you do. Despite his directorial status.” 

“Yeah,” Larry agreed. It was an easy enough agreement that Ahkmenrah couldn't help the sharp look he sent the man—by the pallid complexion Larry had taken on, however, it seemed that he was thinking much the same as Ahkmenrah had been. “I think that's probably one of the best things we can do right now. Keep us all quiet, keep us all trucking on.” 

Larry nodded then, mostly to himself, and tried to give them a confident smile—it was obvious to Ahkmenrah that the man, himself, didn't believe in the motion. “Yeah, I'll stay, Ahk.

“Until things settle down, at least.” 

It was plainly obvious—in Teddy's grave nod at Larry, in Ahkmenrah's hurried 'of course', in Larry's far-away stare as he thought about a future in the place he believed to have left in capable hands—that none of them believed the matter would be settled at any point in the near future.

* * *

In the span of three months, attendance to the museum hit a five-year low as tourists flocked to try and get into what had been dubbed 'live' museums, and then a three-year high after a spike of backlash in response to a reporter managing to get an exclusive interview with a bust of an aggrieved Albert Camus, who declared the Louvre's policies 'bizarre and intolerable' and the practice of keeping the exhibits locked away in their displays a 'show of barbarism that would keep even the most detached of men to seek some form of respite'. 

After six months, stories about 'live' museums weren't on the news anymore—without any sort of scientific data available, it was presumed a hoax by most—and when asked about what he knew in regard to the fate of the affected exhibits and museums, Larry just shook his head in a barely controlled motion. There were now parts of history, as they had feared, that were lost forever—people in history that were lost forever. 

It felt like dying all over again. 

But the moon kept shining on the tablet every night and belief kept itself alive, and so too did the American Museum of Natural History and its inhabitants—in the end, and despite how selfish it was, that was all that Ahkmenrah truly cared about.

**Author's Note:**

> xoxo


End file.
